A Good Quarry (Thunderbolts)

[Hunter Seeker]

Amjad Rafi sat inside the train, cleaning his family service revolver. His hands moved automatically, leaving his mind free. However, there was not much to look at here: The train was in poor repair, and there was only one other passenger, who merely looked curiously at Amjad's scarred stump of a face. Amjad smiled internally at how easily the other passenger has accepted Amjad's ownership of a gun.

Amjad thoughts returned to his home country. In his own mind, the land of Iran took on a golden glow, as a place without injustice or poverty, a fortress against the worse aspects of western culture, such as their gun crime. That Iran had flaws did not even occur to Amjad: it was a thought that simply would not have happened.

Amjad finished cleaning the revolver and spun the barrel, listening to the mechanism. With his hands, he started to play with the gun, flipping, spinning and lightly throwing it with an ability that normally only 30-year long practitioners would be able to use. Without such skill he would not have been able to help this country by fighting it's crime. While it irked him that he was in some small way helping the American government, he knew he damaged it far more when he went head-to-head with various patrols sent out by it.

Amjad was distracted from his thoughts by a sound from outside the carriage. He shifted his position slightly as to allow better response time if needed. The noise was most likely nothing, but Amjad had not survived the Thirde World War by being incautious.

[Penance]

Robbie had never liked this part of the job al that much. 'Bringing in' the vigilantes and villains that the CSA and SHIELD wanted nano-chained and working for the Thunderbolts was never easy, and often ended up getting a lot of bystanders hurt or killed. It didn’t seem necessary sometimes.

As Robbie stepped forward into the train carriage, he was followed closely by to of the CSA’s guards from T-Bolt mountain – both well armoured and equipped with high intensity laser weapons. They didn’t begin to touch on the level of sophistication, lethality and durability of armoured heroes such as Iron Man, or MACH V, but they often helped.

Robbie was unsure as to whether or not adding an ‘official presence’ to this mission would make anything easier. From what bits of the briefing he’d actually listened to, it seemed that this guy hated the US government.
He wasn’t sure why they needed him. Apparently he was fulfilling the role that Bullseye had filled in the pre-war team. He was some kind of marksman, but far more cunning and stable than Bulls’ had ever been.

As the demonic-looking Penance stepped into the carriage with the vigilante, he noticed MACH V flying outside, alongside and level with the train. It shouldn’t be difficult to bring this guy in now.

“Drop the gun. First and only chance.” Penance raised a gloved, spike-covered hand at the man sat by the window, looking away momentarily as two more guards entered the carriage from the other end. This guy was surely stuck now, even if he was was good as they said.

[Hunter Seeker]

Amjad watched as three men entered the train carriage. He stood up quickly: from the way they walked and stood and many other clues, they had military training of some sort. If the big guns and amour were too hard to detect as military. Amjad gave a wry smile at this thought, which turned to a scowl of hatred as he saw their logos. They were from the government: whatever their motive, he would not give them a chance to act on it.

He recognized the man in the middle as a registered superhero, Penance: he had gained Amjad's tolerance for not joining the Untouchables, but it appeared that you could not trust an American who worked for their government. The two men beside him appeared to be advanced grunt: from here he could hear two more people enter at the other end. However, he could see quite a few chinks in their armor from here.

Amjad watched Penance raise his hand and request his surrender. Amjad stared at him coldly. "You would've been briefed on me. What in the name of Allah made you think I would surrender?"

Amjad fired his revolver at the men to Penance's side: the bullet went through the chinks in their armor with perfect aim; Amjad spun the revolver in his hands so it faced the other direction, turned around and fired twice again, saw the men slump down, ducked, rolled turned and fired at Penance, smiling.

The bullet had no effect.

Amjad swore in his native tongue. "Dayyoos". Damned bulletproof armor. And this one had no gaps that he could see.

Amjad stared at Penance. "What makes you do this? Blind trust in your corrupt dog of a government? Hubris?" It was not really a question: Amjad just wanted to vent some of his anger.

Amjad quickly fired again, but at a light above Penance: Glass shattered over him and he was plunged into a small area of darkness. Amjad did not think it would have any effect, but it could prove to distract him as Amjad turned and ran to the other carriage.

[Penance]

He was fast, Robbie had to give him that. He hardly saw the man's hands move as they blurred through the air. 'Hunter Seeker' seemed like an appropriate enough name for the vigilante. He fired five shots in quick succession, each one finding its mark.

Robbie looked about him as the CSA's guardsmen went down, blood pooling around their shattered visors.
He had barely registered the fact that all four of them were dead, when he felt a fifth bullet strike him. The tiny metal projectile bounced harmlessly off the kinetic energy field that surrounded his body, but it served as enough of a warning.
He wasn't going to underestimate this man again.

Suddenly, a sixth bullet struck the light overhead. The carriage went dark.

As the man, Rafi, bolted into the next carriage down, the darkness he had left behind seemed to fade away - to be replaced by an eerie blue glow.
That glow surrounded Penance. Robbie walked after the marksman, moving with a steady and deliberate pace as the air around him crackled with power.

Penance closed his fists, smiling invisibly behind his mask as the interior spikes of the gloves cut into his hands.

"Mach, the CSA guardsmen with me are dead. He's fled into the next carriage." Robbie spoke into his mike, his tone chillingly calm and flat.

[Hunter Seeker]

Amjad ran into the next carriage, putting his father's now empty revolver back into a secret pocket inside his coat and drawing a the pistol he had fought with throughout the third world war, the one that had helped kill Reed Richards.

Looking upwards, he noticed a trapdoor leading up to the roof of the train. Amjad opened it and closed it again, making sure it looked like he had gone to the roof and closed the hatch from the top of the train, and then pressed himself to the wall next to the door, minimizing his shape and hiding by using all of his experience in urban warfare. The trick most likely would only work for two seconds at most, but if this Penance was bulletproof then Amjad would resort to hand-to-hand combat. His overcharged brain had studied several martial arts for three years, and Amjad hoped that he might be able to at least delay penance.

Sometimes two seconds are all you need. Amjad pressed himself closer to the wall as the blue glow from the other carriage came closer, along with a crackling sound. He had one chance, and he planned to use it...

[Mach V]

His suit's sensors had registered the sharp crack of gunfire coming from within the carriage. The concussive force and heat of each shot seemed to indicate a sidearm of some kind. Small arms weren't much of a danger to either him or Robbie, but Abe decided to run another scan just to check.

His suit's sensors created a virtual image of the interior of the train, using something similar to high-frequency RADAR imaging and a combination of a life sign detector and thermal imaging system.

It wasn't a pretty sight. Sure Abe hated SHIELD and the CSA, but the four dead soldiers in there were only doing their jobs. They had their own families, and didn't deserve to die for this kind of scum.
It all just made him hate the CSA even more. Still, right now his anger was directed at the man who called himself 'Hunter Seeker'.

A man who was standing in the next carriage from Robbie. It was difficult to make out anything near Penance on the virtual image whenever he was throwing off energy - like he was now. Abe could however, easily make out the form of their target hiding around a corner in the next train carriage.

"I've got him Penance, I'll be coming around the other side. The other CSA guardsmen are securing the train carriages behind and in front of you two. He'll only have three to move around in soon." Abe replied quickly to Robbie's transmission, before relaying a few orders to the other guardsmen on the train.

Abe was going to get this guy, before he ended up hurting anyone else - or himself.

He landed heavily on the roof of the train, quickly shooting the top hatch off the carriage with one of his suit's blasters.
The bulky armored suit just managed to fit into the space that the hatch afforded to him, and MACH V landed with a loud crash, crouched down in the center of the train carriage.

Abe could see where the bastard was hiding. He raised one arm and locked onto his target - loading a stunner missile into his gauntlet.

Abe fired.

The rocket arced its way down the train carriage, leaving a twisted trail of smoke behind it, before it detonated in the air in front of Rafi's hiding place.
Shocking concussive force, heat and bright light filled the carriage as the rocket detonated. It was designed to stun, not injure, and hopefully that was what it had achieved.

[Hunter Seeker]

Amjad heard someone land heavily on the roof of the train, and he brought his pistol up to the hatch in case whoever it was tried to come in.

When the hatch flew off it's hinges and landed next to where Amjad was hidden, he fired his pistol by reflex. It again had no effect, stopped by Mach V's armor.

Amjad cursed again. America had no honor. Two bulletproof enemies. Actually, Amjad had studied some diagrams (partly formulated on guesswork) of Mach V's armor, and he knew where the gaps in it were. But these gaps were so small as to be almost useless for Amjad to exploit. Still, Amjad fired three shots at where he knew the gaps in the armor where until Mach V fired a missile at him.

Amjad stood up, aimed and fired at the missile, detonating it at the halfway point of it's path. Amjad didn't managed to close his eyes in time, and still felt the effects of the missile as he was thrown to the other side of the carriage. Amjad hoped that Mach V had got hit by the blast of the missile too, but Amjad never planned on hopes.

Amjad ran to the end of the carriage, but saw CSA solders in carriage on the other side, ready to fire if he entered. He cursed yet again and opened the door to his side.

Amjad looked at the speed at which the ground was being devoured by the train, and then thought about what he would have to do if he was captured.

No contest.

Amjad jumped out of the train, rolling as he hit the ground.

[Penance]

Robbie had watched the exchange of fire from the doorway of the next carriage, and had held his arm up to cover his eyes when Abe's rocket propelled flash-bang went off.

He hadn't been expecting what came next. Physically, this guy Rafi was as human as most people, and very susceptible to injury. For an un-powered operator to just jump of a train at these speeds was almost insane.

Penance actually hoped that the idiot had survived the jump. The did want him alive after all.

Robbie took a step closer to the side of his carriage and raised his arms. In a sudden flash of crackling blue energy a concussive blast had ripped open the side of the train, leaving a vast, gaping hole.

Robbie stepped forward as the blue aura about him grew stronger. He seemed to step out of the train onto the air as if it were solid, before he put his arms by his sides and took off, flying fast and hard - like a demonic bullet - towards the area he expected Rafi to be.

[Mach V]

Abe had hardly noticed the rounds as they struck his suit's armor. The suit was made from an artificial composite carbon fiber lattice of Abe's own design, built around a second adamantium skeleton.
There was little to no chance that anyone with a pistol was going to achieve anything by shooting at him.

It was probably due to his overconfidence that he didn't notice the damage to the launch system on his gauntlet until it was too late to do anything about it.
The early detonation of the stunner missile hadn't affected Abe's suit at all - it was only designed to work on biologics. However, one of Rafi's bullets had - inexplicably - found the targeting reticule on his missile launcher and punched through - damaging the launch mechanism.

Abe wasn't going to be launching any more missiles, not unless he wanted to throw them like grenades.

As the target dived from the train, Abe was busy inspecting the damage to his gauntlet. By the time he looked up he noticed Penance leaving the train after the Hunter, and Venom was still nowhere to be seen.

"Venom! Where the hell are you?" Abe yelled into his mike as he dived off the train and took flight, powering away into the sky to begin searching the area for their target.

[Mac Gargan]

The helicopter flew alongside and above the speeding train, inside sat the third Thunderbolt assigned to this operation. The full lengths of his forearms were encased in cuffs linked by solid Vibranium bars four armoured CSA agents pointed rifles at his head, more out of their own nervousness than protocol. Much to their own disquiet Venom knew they were quite harmless while the Nano-Chain held. So they sat, legs hanging over the side of the copter scanning the train with all white eyes watching his team mates chase this apparently normal man with a vague mix of disinterest and anticipation.

"Venom! Where the hell are you?" The speaker in the copter burst to life, even as this ‘normal man’ leapt from a speeding train.

“Crazy asshole” muttered one of the handlers. Another turned to the speaker and tapped a button. “We have him here... Mac...Mr... We have him here Sir.” He released the button and turned to the others. “Deploy the package.” The guards reached over tapping in the release code and with a beep the cuffs snapped open.

“You know boys you can talk to us.” His voice was soft, but sibilant, but giving a deep feeling of menace, as if most of it was below human hearing. “We won’t bite.” Venom smiled showing off his hideous array of teeth. Before leaping over the edge... sadly this one had to be taken alive, for a moment Venom considered how much he missed the unrestrained combat of the war.

“On my way Beetle.” Venom spoke, the comlink in his ear relaying it to Mach V. “Time for us to show you how the a-list operate.” Landing beside the still rolling target. If there had been a briefing Mac hadn’t been listening once he heard the word unpowered. He growled in a tone so deep it set men’s sternums vibrating. “Time to put down the gun, but please don’t We haven’t eaten yet today.”

[Hunter Seeker]

Amjad got up, grinding his teeth: he had rolled on his left arm, and now it was broken in what felt like more than one place. But at least that meant his right arm was still working, and he would be as accurate as ever.

He turned, and stared with hatred and disgust. Venom. That beast had killed and eaten his fellow countrymen. He listened to the thing's threat, and could not stop a shiver of fear: no sensible human would be unafraid in the presence of this cannibal: he was fast, ruthless and very strong.

Amjad knew that the black material that covered Venom would deflect or absorb all his bullets, so he raised his right arm and shot Venom in his wide, salivating mouth. Twice.

He did not see what effect this had, for it was then that Penance slammed into him with the force of a steel girder, propelling him ten meters. Amjad yelled in pain as he landed on his broken arm, and forced himself up.

Amjad looked around him: there was a ladder, but he couldn't manage that with a broken arm. The track was still behind him, but any one of these three could outrun him. Amjad was forced to contend with what he had known all along: all it would take to bring him down was one good, strong hit.

he lifted his gun at the darkness in front of him, ready to go down fighting.

[Penance]

Robbie had seen him eventually, and it hadn't taken long. He could just about make out the figure by the side of the track in the growing darkness, but when the helicopter flew by overhead, the searchlight made everything clearly visible.

He watched the hulking black shape that was Venom, as it fell from the helicopter towards Rafi. Robbie hoped that Venom wasn't going to repeat what happened to Oliver Osnick. That poor guy lost an arm to Gargan, and Rafi was going to need both arms to be any use to the T-Bolts.

Feeling it best to intervene before Venom got his claws on the man, Robbie sped up. Hurtling through the air, Penance came down low and fast, tackling the man as he landed.
Robbie was careful to avoid hitting him too hard, and tried to keep him away from the external spikes on his armor - and it seemed to have worked.

As Penance rolled and stood again, he dusted himself off, seemingly uninjured, and approached the man slumped on the ground before him.

"Had to do this the hard way, didn't you?" Robbie shook his head and raised one arm and gestured at the injured-looking Hunter Seeker.
A sudden flash of blue erupted from Penance's hand, and a small energy shockwave flew through the air towards Rafi, knocking the gun from his hand and flattening him.

Penance looked down at the unconscious form on the ground in front of him, wondering how a more or less normal man could have ever caused them so much trouble. He could see why the CSA wanted him as a secret weapon - the same way they had used Bullseye.

"You wanna pick this up?" Robbie turned to look at Venom over his shoulder, not taking much in, but just making sure he was still there.

He hoped Gargan wasn't going to want a snack on the return journey.

[Mac Gargan]

Mac twisted in the air as the bullet passed millimetres from his face. By all the gods they could get used to this Spider-Sense. Carrying the flip through to land flawlessly, Venom bared their teeth preparing to rush this impertinent bastard and tear his arms off before the Chain could bring him down... That was until Penance hit him like a spiky meteorite. Still Venom strolled over to see if there was anything left twitching. But no, the target had been neutralised.

“Stamped on that little problem didn’t we Spike?” Venom smirked as they padded over disturbingly silently. Penance looked up at them with that iron face. Even by Venom’s standards they found this one a little psychotic. Pain based powers? What was up with that?

"You wanna pick this up?"

“Sure... you want it gift wrapped?” Chuckling at their own joke Venom stood over the target as it desperately lifted its gun. “Are you shitting us? Stay down.” Extending an arm it spouted thick black webbing directly into the gun. “Come on big guy let’s go.” Two more gouts of webbing hogtied the prisoner, Venom picked him up by the webbing and slung him over his shoulder. “Ok where to?”

[Mach V]

MACH V landed heavily behind Venom and Penance, the repulsorlift systems in his suit flaring bright and loud as they decelerated hard.

Abe looked around as he stood from his semi-crouched landing position. It seemed that Robbie and Mac had finally managed to get a hold of this Amjad Rafi - or Hunter Seeker.
Venom was carrying the slumped form of a man - bound tightly in black, sticky webbing - over his shoulder. Abe had just caught the last thing he had said to Robbie as he arrived on the scene.

"Back home I suppose." MACH intoned, looking around at the debris from the wrecked train carriage.
The whole train had come to a stop a couple of miles down the line. Apparently the conductors didn't even know there were CSA guardsmen on board, and were having a real good time giving the CSA hell.

As Abe finished talking, the same helicopter that had dropped off Venom earlier came into view once more, losing altitude as it landed a few tens of meters away.

"You'll be taking the copter back to the mountain Venom," Abe had to increase the volume on his suit's external speakers to be heard over the noise of the rotor blades, "And Robbie will be going with you. I don't want that guy to come back to the mountain with any fewer limbs or appendages than he left here with!"